The record participation of the final cut-off last September compared to 643 and 669 proposals for the two previous cut-offs underlines once more the popularity of the FET programme.

All eligible proposals – 800 RIA and 15 CSA – have been evaluated. The proposals with the highest scores, 11 RIA projects and two CSA projects, have now signed grant agreements. The available budget of € 40 million set the stakes for excellent projects very high which is demonstrated by the fact that only 1.4% of RIA proposals can be funded.

True to the non-prescriptive, cross-cutting nature of the call, the retained proposals are expected to foster international collaboration in a multitude of disciplines such as robotics, nanotechnology, neuroscience, information science, biology, artificial intelligence or chemistry. 

These are the projects for which grant agreements have been signed:

RIAs

AMECRYS aims at revolutionising the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals with innovative membrane crystallization technology. Coordinating institution: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy

FLIPT takes inspiration from nature to set a new low energy paradigm for the productions of plastics. Coordinating institution: University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

GOAL-Robots proposes to create goal-based open-ended autonomous learning robots that could function as service robots and address important societal needs. Coordinating institution: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy

ICARUS seeks to develop innovative coarsening-resistant alloys with enhanced radiation tolerance and ultra-fine -grained structure for aerospace application. Coordinating institution: Universidad de Burgos, Spain

LiRichFCC will develop a new class of powerful materials for electrochemical energy storage: lithium-rich oxyfluorides with cubic dense packing allowing for unprecedented energy and power density in batteries. Coordinating institution: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Germany

Lumiblast envisages a paradigm shift in cancer therapy by using mitochondria-powered chemiluminescence to treat inaccessible tumours in a non-invasive manner. Coordinating institution: Oslo Universitetssykehus HF, Norway

MESO-BRAIN targets a transformative progress in neuroscience and medicine by developing 3 D human stem cell derived neural networks to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, dementia and trauma. Coordinating institution: Aston University, United Kingdom

NanOQTech will develop nanoscale systems for optical quantum technologies to be used in quantum communications, information processing and sensing. Coordinating institution: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France

NEURAM targets the establishment of a new discipline – visual genetics – to visualize nuclear processes in the brain of living organisms in real-time to be utilized for example in early stage disease diagnosis, cancer detection, and toxicity studies. Coordinating institution: University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

PHENOMEN aims at the generation of all-optical phononic circuits enabled by optomechanics. The envisaged transfer of information carried between optical channels will hugely impact information processing. Coordinating institution: Fundacio Institut Catala de Nanociencia i Nanotecnologia, Spain

SPICE intends to create a spintronic-photonic integrated circuit platform for novel electronics which can be applied in ultrafast and energy-efficient memory or sensor technology. Coordinating institution: Aarhus Universitet, Denmark

CSAs

SC-square will unite the communities of satisfiability checking and symbolic computation to solve real problems such as the security and the safety of computer systems or large mathematical problems by the development of radically improved software tools. Coordinating institution: University of Bath, United Kingdom

SENSE will create a roadmap for the ideal low light level sensor development to help coordinate the research efforts of different groups working in the area world-wide.  Coordinating institution: Stiftung Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron Desy, Germany

FET-Open call statistics* for the 3rd cut-off:

RIA: 11 / 800 (1.4%)
CSA: 2 / 15 (13%)
Of note, number of proposals below threshold(s): 454 (RIA) and 6 (CSA)
(*) Number of proposals retained for Grant Agreement preparation / Number of submitted proposals

More information:

FET-Open

Funded projects from the first and second cut-off 2014/2015 and from the first cut-off 2016/2017.